Do You Know How To Comment On Blogs?
Everybody tells you that to drive traffic to your beloved blog and your masterful website, you should comment on other websites and other blogs. Ain't the steps simple?
- Go to the website
- Post the comment
- Link to your website/blog through your signature
- Done!
Wrong!
- Go to the blog you want to comment on and look around.
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- What kind of traffic does this website/blog gets. Commenting on a blog that rarely gets people doesn't get you anywhere unless you want to have the attention of the blog owner. “But”, the famous but, many people that operate low volume websites/blogs do not update often and do not check their comments.
- What kind of comments are already there on that post and the other posts? Do they shoot down everybody that doesn't agree with the blog post?
- How many comments do they usually get? Only one, two or many dozens of comments?
- Timeliness
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- How quickly are you responding to the post? If the thread is stale, don't bother. Your answer/reply won't be seen by anybody, including the owner of the blog.
- If there's already more than a dozen of reply, don't bother. Your reply will be buried and almost nobody will notice it. Then wait for another opportunity, it will come.
- Usually people post blog entries at around the same time, early morning in their time zone…, then wait for the new post.
- Topic
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- Does this irk you? You can comment but always be polite and “somewhat” diplomatic. You don't want to be known as the jerk!
- Do you agree? Comment only if you have something to add. Just saying wonderful or great won't contribute to anything.
- Why get involved?
- Will this drive people to your website? Only good and thoughtful comments will. Screaming, ranting and raving will not.
- Will this increase your rankings? Often links from your website to their blog will increase your ranking higher than commenting on their website and linking back to yours. This shouldn't be the only purpose of your comment or it will make more damage than help.
- Do you already have a post on the same topic but a different angle? Give a short summary and point to your blog/post for more details.
- Is this about the topic or about you? I'm the best, I'm the greatest, I know everything… often equals jerk (except for me of course, but I write this blog).